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Craving

Hormone Hazard

Linda Perrotti believes that fluctuating estrogen levels can make women increasingly vulnerable to the rewarding effects of cocaine, even opening them up to a risk of addiction.

The associate professor of psychology received a three-year, $413,980 grant from the National Institutes of Health to fund biomolecular research on the effects of changing hormone levels on behavioral adaptations. She and her team are using rodent models to focus on three specific molecules associated with drug addiction and reward.

The repeated administration of cocaine causes molecular adaptations in the brain, which trigger changes in behavior that are focused on obtaining more cocaine. These neuroadaptations primarily affect the dopamine reward system; long-term exposure to the drug can make these changes permanent, causing the individual to develop a neurobiological disposition to seeking cocaine.

Dr. Perrotti and her team’s preclinical work suggested that women given hormone treatment preferred higher doses of cocaine; this could indicate that estrogen alters dopamine signaling and influences the strength of cocaine-associated clues.

“We need to find out how it affects learning and memory circuits, making drugs more or less rewarding,” she says. “Compared to men, women experience higher levels of craving and relapse during periods of abstinence and take larger amounts of cocaine during bouts of relapse. Our study could lead to customizable and differentiated addiction treatment and prevention measures for post-menopausal women, women on hormone replacement therapy, women on hormone-based birth control, etc.”